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Charity food providers adapt, overlap to meet local demand

A decade ago, there was a stark difference between the canned goods and boxed mixes that Gleaners Community Food Bank of Southeastern Michigan distributed and the milk, meats and other highly perishable foods that Forgotten Harvest rescued and turned over to help feed the hungry.

Today, there's increasing overlap in the types of food the two are distributing in their attempts to meet local demand.

The service models continue to differ, though. While Detroit-based Gleaners warehouses food and fills orders from food providers at a slight cost, Oak Park-based Forgotten Harvest transports rescued food as quickly as possible to providers via its trucks, at no cost to them.

Each approach offers advantages for the operations of local pantries and soup kitchens.

The advantage of working with Forgotten Harvest is that it charges nothing for the food it delivers, said Chet Decker, executive director of Hope Center in Macomb, a client choice pantry in Fraser that serves 1,600-1,800 struggling families monthly.

"But from a business standpoint, you never know what you're getting from Forgotten Harvest," he said.

By ordering food through Gleaners, the pantry can keep a regular stock on its shelves, he said. But some of the food comes at a cost — an important consideration given that the pantry, launched in 2010, has an annual food purchase budget of just $225,000, he said, or just under a third of its $780,000 in revenue last year.

"It's a benefit to receive free food from either (one), but there's a benefit to have that regular food on our shelves," Decker said.

Stores pitch in

Continued high demand for food assistance in metro Detroit and cuts in federal food allocations to emergency food distributors are spurring organizations like Gleaners and Forgotten Harvest to accept any food donations that come their way.

In November, Gleaners entered an agreement with Grand Rapids-based Meijer Inc. to collect perishable food from three of its stores in Livingston and Monroe counties that are outside of its shared service area with Forgotten Harvest in Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties.

Gleaners President Gerry Brisson

The stores have contributed about 40,000 pounds of food, which could mean 160,000 additional pounds of food or more for the year, said Gleaners President Gerry Brisson.

The deal builds on rescue the food bank has been doing for years in those areas, and Forgotten Harvest's rescue of food from Meijer locations in the tri-county area, he said.

In addition to the products it receives through local food drives, Gleaners buys other types of food, including produce with a longer shelf life like apples, cabbage, potatoes and onions from area farms.

It charges nothing for 50 percent to 60 percent of the food it distributes, since it comes to the food bank at no cost. But it charges providers a fee of 18 cents per pound for frozen foods it has to refrigerate or produce it has to pick up or pay shipping on. And it charges whatever it has to pay for other types of food that it buys from wholesalers, such as ground beef, Brisson said. Gleaners is now taking in highly perishable foods as well, even outside Monroe and Livingston counties. Perishable foods are often dropped off, Brisson said.

And local grocery chains are not only providing perishables but also shelf-stable items such as canned goods that are dented or have crushed boxes. They also donate food when manufacturers change the weight of products on the shelf or pull food for other reasons. For example, manufacturers and stores pulled boxes of cereal with former Olympian Michael Phelps' picture on them after he was caught smoking a bong, Brisson said.

When Gleaners can't get the perishables distributed quickly enough to the food providers it serves, it will call Forgotten Harvest to help deliver them, he said.

Gleaners distributed 41 million pounds of food in fiscal 2013 ended Sept. 30. That was down from 46 million the year before, largely because of cuts in government food programs, Brisson said. Its cash budget for fiscal 2014 is about $22 million, on par with 2013.

"As all food banks and rescues are soliciting everyone we can to get as much food as we can, our product mix becomes more similar," he said.

"But our business methods haven't changed ... the advantage to doing it the inventory way is by giving people choice they can plan better because they know exactly what's coming on the truck."

Forgotten Harvest, which began by picking up food from caterers, local restaurants, grocery stores and farms, is seeing more shelf-stable items in the mix of food it takes in, said Executive Director Susan Goodell. They have been coming from grocery store rescues, national food manufacturers and, at least occasionally, area food drives.

Forgotten Harvest Executive Director Susan Goodell

If an item is something Gleaners already has or can't take for whatever reason, Forgotten Harvest will offer it to the food providers it serves, Goodell said.

"By working together, you're able to extend our reach into the community and get more food to people," she said.

In 2013, the Oak Park food rescue also launched a farm operation of its own that brought in just under 1 million pounds of food, Goodell said.

Forgotten Harvest distributed 45.5 million pounds of food in fiscal 2013 ended June 30, up from 43.9 million pounds in 2012 and 23.2 million pounds in 2011, operating on a cash budget of $11.2 million, said Director of Communications John Owens.

"Because of the magnitude of the (hunger) problem, both systems are very much needed," she said.

'Not one single solution'

"There is not one single solution to the problem of hunger in metro Detroit," said John Ziraldo, CEO of Pontiac-based Lighthouse of Oakland County, which operates pantries in Pontiac and Clarkston.

"It requires us to be flexible and responsive in the way that Forgotten Harvest can be, and it requires us to do long-term planning with the foods that Gleaners provides (in order) to make sure that there's a predictable supply of food."

Items such as baked goods and prepared foods could only come to Lighthouse through a program like Forgotten Harvest, Ziraldo said. The rescue also brings fresh meats that are an important source of protein for the families Lighthouse services.

"On the other hand, when we want turkeys for our Thanksgiving program, we're able to plan with Gleaners. We could not have served nearly 2,000 families with a Thanksgiving meal without that," he said.

While Forgotten Harvest and Gleaners both help, many food providers say they still need to turn to other sources of food to feed the hungry.

Capuchin Soup Kitchen in Detroit goes through Gordon Food Service to buy food it needs that's not always available through Gleaners, such as large cans of tomato sauce or garbanzo beans, said Brother Jerry Smith, who is executive director.

It also buys food from other specialty food suppliers of dairy, meat and other items, spending about half of its food budget on items from Gleaners and half from the retailers, Smith said.